Online Prescription Services expand telemedicine

Prescription drugs are just another addition to the e-commerce culture we live in.

We are living in the age of “want and you shall receive” consumer culture. With a quick trip to a website and the click of a button, almost anything can be delivered to your doorstep. Clothes are old news. Groceries a little outdated. The most recent hype: prescription drugs, an addition to the many reaches that telemedicine now has.

With the ability to ship almost anything else right to your doorstep, companies like Hims have created online platforms where users can shop for generic versions of prescriptions and have them delivered directly to them. Cutting out the middle man (the pharmacy in this case, department stores in the case of clothing) has proven to be popular among consumers for convenience and ease.

Companies like Hims and its sister company, which launched last year called Hers, offer generic versions of prescriptions for a handful of conditions, usually relating to sexual performance, skin care and hair care. Consumers can choose what condition they would like treated and then they have the choice to buy the matching treatment and have it shipped to them. Sites like Hers and Nurx have tackled another prescription as well. They offer consumers the opportunity to buy birth control directly from their sites.

This idea of online pharmacies is not necessarily new but it has picked up traction in recent months. The pivot toward online pharmacies made some noise back in 2018 when Amazon announces it had bought PillPack, a company that centers around people who take multiple daily medications. Other services are beginning to turn to online operations, such as Planned Parenthood. They have developed an application that users can request birth control or UTI treatment directly from their device.

Online health services, although gaining traction, are still not the norm for many consumers across the nation. While they offer the convenience of skipping the face-to-face appointments that make healthcare related issues a bit more time consuming to address, they have yet to surpass traditional methods of healthcare practices.